liminix-fork/doc/user.rst

User Manual
###########

This manual is an early work in progress, not least because Liminix is
not yet ready for users who are not also developers.

Configuring for your use case
*****************************

You need to create a ``configuration.nix`` that describes your router
and the services that you want to run on it. Start by copying
``vanilla-configuration.nix`` and adjusting it, or look in the `examples`
directory for some pre-written configurations.

If you want to create a configuration that can be installed on
a hardware device, be sure to include the "flashimage" module.

.. code-block: nix

  imports = [
    ./modules/flashimage.nix
  ]



Building and flashing
*********************

An example command to build Liminix might look like this:

.. code-block:: console

    nix-build -I liminix-config=./tests/smoke/configuration.nix \
     --arg device "import ./devices/qemu" -A outputs.default

In this command ``<liminix-config>`` points to your
``configuration.nix``, ``device`` is the file for your hardware device
definition, and ``outputs.default`` will generate some kind of
Liminix image output appropriate to that device.

For the qemu device in this example, ``outputs.default`` is an alias
for ``outputs.vmbuild``, which creates a directory containing a
squashfs root image and a kernel. You can use the `mips-vm` command to
run this.

For the currently supported hardware devices, ``outputs.default``
creates a directory containing a file called ``firmware.bin``.  This
is a raw image file that can be written directly to the firmware flash
partition.


Flashing with :command:`flashcp`
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This requires an existing Liminix system, or perhaps some other
operating system on the device which provides the :command:`flashcp`
command. You need to locate the "firmware" partition, which you can do
with a combination of :command:`dmesg` output and the contents of
:file:`/proc/mtd`

**Don't do this on a device that's running on the same flash partition
as you're about to overwrite, otherwise you're likely to crash it. Use
kexecboot (see "Updates to running devices" below) first to reboot
into a RAM-based system.**


.. code-block:: console

   <5>[    0.469841] Creating 4 MTD partitions on "spi0.0":
   <5>[    0.474837] 0x000000000000-0x000000040000 : "u-boot"
   <5>[    0.480796] 0x000000040000-0x000000050000 : "u-boot-env"
   <5>[    0.487056] 0x000000050000-0x000000060000 : "art"
   <5>[    0.492753] 0x000000060000-0x000001000000 : "firmware"

   # cat /proc/mtd
   dev:    size   erasesize  name
   mtd0: 00040000 00001000 "u-boot"
   mtd1: 00010000 00001000 "u-boot-env"
   mtd2: 00010000 00001000 "art"
   mtd3: 00fa0000 00001000 "firmware"
   mtd4: 002a0000 00001000 "kernel"
   mtd5: 00d00000 00001000 "rootfs"

Then you can copy the image to the device with :command:`ssh`

.. code-block:: console

   build-machine$ tar chf - result/firmware.bin | \
    ssh root@the-device tar -C /run -xvf -

and then connect to the device and run


.. code-block:: console

   flashcp -v firmware.bin /dev/mtd3



Flashing from OpenWrt (untested)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If your device is running OpenWrt then it probably has the
:command:`mtd` command installed and you can use it as follows:

.. code-block:: console

   mtd -r write /tmp/firmware_image.bin firmware

For more information, please see the `OpenWrt manual <https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/sysupgrade.cli>`_


Flashing from the boot monitor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you are prepared to open the device and have a TTL serial adaptor
of some kind to connect it to, you can probably flash it using U-Boot.
This is quite hardware-specific: please refer to the Developer Manual.



Updates to running devices
**************************

To mitigate the risk of flashing a new configuration and potentially
render the device unresponsive if the configuration is unbootable or
doesn't bring up a network device, Liminix has a
"try before write" mode.

To test a configuration without writing it to flash, import the
``kexecboot`` module and build ``outputs.kexecboot`` instead of
``outputs.default``.  This generates a directory containing the root
filesystem image and kernel, along with an executable called `kexec`
and a `boot.sh` script that runs it with appropriate arguments.

For example

.. code-block:: console

   nix-build --show-trace -I liminix-config=./examples/arhcive.nix \
     --arg device "import ./devices/gl-ar750"
     -A outputs.kexecboot && \
     (tar chf - result | ssh root@the-device tar -C /run -xvf -)

and then login to the device and run

.. code-block:: console

   cd /run/result
   sh ./boot.sh .


This will load the new kernel and map the root filesystem into a RAM
disk, then start executing the new kernel. *This is effectively a
reboot - be sure to close all open files and finish anything else
you were doing first.*

If the new system crashes or is rebooted, then the device will revert
to the old configuration it finds in flash. Thus, by combining kexec
boot with a hardware watchdog you can try new images with very little
chance of bricking anything. When you are happy that the new
configuration is correct, build and flash a flashable image of it.



Module options (tbd)
**************



Foo module
==========

Module docs will go here. This part of the doc should be autogenerated.


Bar module
==========

Baz module
==========

Quuz net device
===============